


A Boy Named Sara: Rise of the Neutral

by chochowilliams



Series: I Want Us To Be A Family [2]
Category: Gravitation
Genre: 1st person pov, Alternate History, Angst, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Hermaphrodites, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chochowilliams/pseuds/chochowilliams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A manuscript was discovered at an estate sale on Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York that would change everything. This is that manuscript.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy Named Sara: Rise of the Neutral

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Originally, this was the prologue to my Gravitation fanfic, "Street of Dreams", but decided to make it its own one-shot companion piece instead. It has since been completely rewritten. The point to uploading this is to give you readers a little more perspective on the True Hermaphrodites as the Third Sex aspect which is a major part of "Street of Dreams".

* * *

 

**Editor’s Note**

A few years ago, while visiting relatives in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, I happened to come across an estate sale quite by accident. Somehow, I had become turned around and wound up on the opposite side of town from where my relatives lived. Lost, I looked around for somebody to help point me in the right direction. That was when I spotted the first sign for an estate sale. Following the signs led me to a lovely Victorian mansion set a little ways from the road. It was in desperate need of some TLC, but had the makings of a breathtaking home.

I pulled over and asked a rather friendly looking elderly couple perusing the sale for directions to Debbie Lane, which they did graciously.

As I started back to my rental, I was waylaid by a cardboard box brimming with what appeared to be antique books hidden underneath a table covered with clothes and other linens. Anybody who knows me will agree with me when I say that I love books, especially antique books. I have managed to assemble quite the collection over the years--most of which I inherited from family. Intrigued, I pulled out the box and looked through the dusty, fragile, mildewed tomes. The books covered a range of subjects and topics from fiction as well as nonfiction. I had to have them, so I approached the man having the sale and asked him about the books. He said he’d give me the entire box for fifty dollars, but I managed to get him down to twenty-five. I loaded the box into the car and made my way back to my relatives’ house, itching for a closer look at the books.

That night after dinner, I was going through my new acquisitions with my relatives when I came across a manuscript hidden at the bottom of the box. It wasn’t very long, maybe eleven pages. Though, there were whole sections of the manuscript that were so faded that they could not be read and there were also stains and water marks and looked as if it had been chewed in places. Basically, it was in horrible condition, but despite its lackluster appearance, I was intrigued, so that night as I was unwinding in bed, I started to read.

What I noticed immediately was that the manuscript did not have any sort of title nor was there an author‘s name, at least none that I could see; for that matter, I was soon to learn that most of the characters within the story had no names. Even the town in which the story took place was never mentioned.

It wasn’t until later when I had my relatives read the manuscript that a name along with a date was discovered scrawled in faded pencil on the inside cover of the manuscript: Marjorie Smith 1887.

I was not sure what this Marjorie Smith had to do with my manuscript at this point. Was it, perhaps, the author? Or maybe, this Marjorie Smith was a previous owner of my manuscript.

I had no answers to these or any questions I had about the manuscript and reading through the manuscript only managed to produce more questions.

The following is what was found within its pages.

 

* * *

 

I’m sure he wasn’t named Sara when he was born, but it was the name he had taken by the time he came into my office late one spring afternoon heavy with child.

Years earlier, I had inquired of Sara what name he had gone by before he started living as a woman, but he refused to say. He would only say, “I’ve always gone by Sara, from as far back as I can remember. My sister gave it to me one day when we were playing Tea. I fell in love with it instantly. From that day forward, I was Sara. There was a name, an appropriately masculine name, my parents gave me upon my birth, yes, but I never considered it my name. I always despised it. It was like acting out a part in a play. It was just a role, nothing more. Besides, that person, the ‘son’ my parents longed for is dead. In fact, from my point of view, he was never even conceived. For my father, his son died the day he kicked him out of the house. I told Father that was fine because to me, he died the day my mother was found in the garden.”

What did he mean by that, I wondered.

That was when I realized that Sara hardly ever spoke of his parents, though he spoke at length about his twin sister, Joanna, whom he had always been close to and still was to this day. In fact, just the other day, Sara stopped by the clinic with news that his sister and her children were to move in with him and Eric. (Eric, by the by, is Sara’s husband). I applaud Joanna for her tenacity to finally leave her brute of a husband; a heavy-handed man did not deserve the staunch loyalty and obedience from his wife that Joanna had gifted the man for the five years they have been together.

Naturally, I was curious about Sara‘s parents as he never spoke about them. I wondered whether they were still alive or had they passed on? What kind of people had they been? From what little I knew, I was aware that it was likely that Sara and his father were not on the best of terms and I wondered what had transpired to create such animosity between the two.

My patience and persistence paid off, for although hesitant at first, Sara was soon telling tales of his mother who had been a gentle, sweet soul with a passion for life unmatched by any he ever encountered before or since.

“She loved to laugh,” was what Sara said. “That is what I remember most about her. She was always laughing. In fact, I don’t remember her being anything but happy.

“She also loved gardening. Oh, how she loved her flowers. She called her garden her Eden.

“Everybody who met Mother loved her. She had no enemies. There was nobody that I spoke to who had anything bad to say about her. She was an angel among men.”

Unfortunately, a couple months shy of her children’s seventh birthday, Sara’s mother was found in the garden by one of the maids. To this day, there is no official cause of death. Apparently, there was no obvious sign of foul play. His mother did not appear to have been poisoned or suffering from some undiagnosed illness. However, Sara remembers his mother suffering from headaches in the days leading up to his mother’s passing.

**[Editor’s Note: It is possible that Sara’s mother suffered an aneurism.]**

“When Mother died, the laughter died with her. The house became oppressive.”

As for Sara’s father, he had already been a prominent and well-respected citizen and businessman before deciding to run for mayor and then later running for Governor, which he won in a landslide. As I sit here writing this account, Sara’s father was gearing up to run for Congress. It is rumored that he is favored to win.

“After Mother died, Father stayed away from the house more and more. At the time, he was mayor, so he had responsibilities. Even at seven years old, I was aware of just how important my father was to the community. I was very proud of him. Our city was prospering because of him. Taxes were down and income was up. But he was never home. My sister and I would go weeks without seeing him. The servants would say that he came home after we went to bed, but left before we woke. It became such that it was as if Father had been the one to die.”

I cannot even imagine what it must have been like for Sara and his sister to not only grow up without a mother, but a father as well. It seems to me that Sara’s father was so grief stricken over the death of his beloved wife that he threw himself into his work. Having lost my beloved Harold, I understand that feeling all too well. It has since been well over a decade since my husband departed this world, but the loss is still so great that at times, I found myself bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. But to ignore his children in his all-consuming grief? There is no excuse for that.

With Sara’s mother dead and his father as good as, Sara and his sister grew up surrounded by servants.

The boy-child became a teenager and woke one morning to discover that his whole world had once again been flipped upside down.

“I knew from an early age that I was attracted to boys and not girls,” Sara confessed. “But this…My father always complained that I looked too effeminate and I always thought of myself more of a girl than a boy, but this? I never saw this coming.”

He was, of course, referring to the ability to bare children. How this was even possible, I still do not know.

It should have been difficult to hide any of this from Sara’s father as his father was never home, and for a while, it was, but one day, his father came home unexpectedly.

“I was fourteen by this point,” Sara explained, “and had taken to dressing up as Sara more and more. My sister loved it! I would wear my mother’s old clothing and her jewelry, and my sister would do up my hair and my makeup. For some reason, the servants never said anything, not even to my father.”

In fact, it was the servants who warned Sara that his father had returned.

“Originally, Father was supposed to return home the day before, but a telegram arrived that morning announcing that his stay had to be extended another week or so, so when Mary-”

Mary, of course, was Sara and Joanna’s nanny, hired by their father after their mother passed away. At this point, the fourteen year olds were too old for a nanny, but Mary (loyal to a fault) had stayed on to help raise her wards as the Master of the house was never home to do such.

“-came running into my room late one afternoon claiming Father just pulled up the drive, I thought she was joshing as she was want to do, but when I heard Father‘s voice, I panicked. Joanna went down to distract Father long enough so that I could change clothes, but there was only so much Joanna could do. Mary and I were still struggling with the dress when Father burst into my room.”

To say Sara’s father was livid at the sight he beheld as he entered his son’s room that afternoon would be an underestimation, but fortunately, Sara and Mary were able to convince Sara’s father that Mary was using him as a sewing mannequin as he was closer in size to Mary’s sister than Joanna was.

“Funnily enough, this is true. Mary’s sister and I are just about the same size and Mary has used me as her dummy on a few occasions when she was making her sister a dress, so it was an easy lie to tell Father.”

With a promise to never do it again, the incident was quickly forgotten.

The next three years passed relatively the same as the seven years following the death of the Mistress of the house.

At first, Sara’s father stayed close to home (my guess is that it is possible he did not completely buy Sara and Mary’s excuse for why he caught his son dressed as a woman). According to Sara, in those two and a half months, his father was home more than he had been the last seven years combined. It did not last, of course.

“I was conflicted. Part of me yearned for this trend to continue for I missed my father terribly. By this point, he had become a ghost. He was nothing more than a picture on the wall. In fact, oftentimes, I found myself forgetting what Father even looked like. My sister and I wanted us all to be a family again.”

My first instinct upon hearing this was to accuse Sara of exaggerating and I would have done just that if it were not for my very best girlfriend whose father traveled out west to look for work when she was but a babe and was never heard or seen from again until my friend was married and had a babe of her own. I received a letter from her not long after she moved out to California. Apparently, a man she did not recognize came up to her in the street one day claiming to be her father. “You are mistaken my good sir,” she told this elderly gentlemen who appeared to be escorting his elderly wife and their family out to a late lunch. “You see, my father passed when I was a child, so you cannot be my father.” As it turns out, that man claiming to be her father was in fact her father, the very man who had gone missing some twenty years earlier. (It seems that he started another family out west, leaving his old family to suffer his absence.) Her mother confirmed the sighting. My friend merely shrugged and brushed the experience aside as nothing and to her it was. She still insists to this day that her father passed when she was a child and for her, that might actually be true.

So for Sara to not see his father as his father but as a mere stranger who happens to live under the same roof for short periods of time whenever the man decided to remember that yes, he did have a flesh and blood family was not so farfetched no matter how depressing the image may be.

“But there was another part of me that celebrated my father’s departure back to what had become the normal routine. Without Father at home, I could be me: Sara. I did not have to pretend to be someone I was not.”

As terrible as the longing was to have his father back in his life as a father and not as an elected official, the man’s very presence was suffocating.

A peaceful harmony fell over the house.

All that was to change the summer after Sara and his sister turned seventeen. By this time, their father had become governor and had decided to run for reelection.

“Father was supposed to be in the capital for a debate, so I didn’t hesitate to bring my beau over that night.”

All attempts to gleam any sort of information about this mysterious beau were futile for Sara refused to give anything away about this young chap that seemed to have stolen his seventeen-year-old heart. Even when I inquired as to whether or not this beau was aware that Sara was not who she appeared to be, all Sara did was smile.

Sara did admit that the decision to invite his beau over that night for dinner would turn out to have a disastrous outcome.

Years later, looking back at the incident that would change his life forever, Sara admitted that as grievous as the event was, it was also fortuitous. When I inquired as to what he meant by this, he claimed that if the following events had not taken place, he never would have met Eric.

Dinner that night was roast pheasant, boiled potatoes and fresh greens from the garden, which Sara and his sister had continued to keep after the death of their mother. Afterwards, the three of them (Sara, Joanna and Sara’s beau) retired to the front porch with slices of Mary’s famous lemon pound cake.

“It was a beautiful evening. The day had been oppressive, but with the onset of night, a gentle breeze had risen and chased away the heat. The night sky was clear. There was not a single wisp of cloud in sight and there were stars for as far as the eyes could see, all twinkling and gleaming like a sea of diamonds. All around us, the nightlife serenaded us. It was perfect.”

Before too long, Joanna said goodnight and retired for the evening, leaving Sara and his beau alone. While blushing a lovely shade of red, Sara admitted the two did more than chat that night.

Ah! To be young and in love.

This thought gave me pause and I wondered whether Sara had been in love with his beau. I inquired of Sara whether this was true or not. He confessed that, “At the time, I believed I was in love, yes, but as an adult, I have come to realize how very foolish I had been and about a great many things.”

With that cryptic statement, Sara proceeded to tell me that as things between he and his beau were becoming heated, who should appear from out of the shadows, but the Master of the house.

Now, suddenly, Sara’s earlier statement made sense. Had he been set up? Had his beau and his father worked in tandem so the deviant lifestyle Sara had chosen could be brought to the light of day? It was the only excuse that made any semblance of sense for Sara confessed that he had not heard the carriage pull up, nor had he heard the distinctive sound of feet walking across the gravel drive.

“I believe I said before that after the death of Mother, Father’s absence from the house made it seem as if he had been the one to pass on, as if he had become a ghost and that night, it was almost as if he were a ghost for he appeared (quite literally) out of nowhere and with no warning.”

**(Editor’s Note: Several paragraphs at this point in the original manuscript were too faded by time to read. It is believed that at this point, the author of the manuscript was speaking about how “Sara” and his father started arguing, ending with “Sara” being kicked out of the house.)**

“From that day onward, I was dead, but as I said before, being disowned and kicked out of the house by Father did not bother me as much as being rejected did. All I have ever wanted was for my father to love me for me, but apparently that was too much to ask.”

**(Editor’s Note: Again, several paragraphs at this point in the original manuscript were too damaged by water damage to read. It is believed that at this point, the author of the manuscript was telling how “Sara” made his way to an unnamed boomtown somewhere in the western section of the United States.)**

But as careful as Sara was, it did not take long for his cash reserves to start running low. It quickly became apparent that he needed to find a job; otherwise, he would find himself out on the street. Unfortunately, with no skills, it quickly became apparent that as “Sara”, he was not going to find employment, so as much as he was against the idea, he tried his luck as “Stephen”.

Of course, when I inquired as whether or not this was the name he had been born with (the “appropriately masculine name” he had spoken of before), Sara refused to say either way. He merely gave me that cryptic smile of his that I have long since become familiar with when questions of his past were asked.

Unfortunately, his luck at finding employment was not any better as “Stephen”.

“I could not even find work shoveling shit out of the street.”

Perhaps, I should give you a brief summarization of the history of our illustrious town.

At the time Sara first arrived in town, people were leaving in the same fashion as they had arrived: in droves. The mines, which had given birth to our fair little town a few short decades earlier, were drying out and without the fuel to continue running it, the once prosperous economy was collapsing and with it, the jobs as well as the people were fast disappearing. Even the sheriff had abandoned us for greener pastures.

A few points should be clarified about Sara here. According to Sara, he considers himself neither man nor woman, but a combination of the two. At first glance, he may appear as the perfect masculine specimen (not including his fascination with women‘s raiment and his apparently “too effeminate” appearance), but he has pointed out several times since we met (and I have to confirm what he says) that a closer examination of his person (externally as well as internally) would suggest otherwise. That, like his twin sister Joanna, Sara was able to become pregnant was proof that he was not completely, one-hundred percent masculine.

“But that is all right. I have long since come to terms with what and who I am. It is those around me that seem to have trouble accepting me for who and what I am. They persist in labeling me and sticking me into one category or another and when they realize that they cannot, they become frustrated and fearful, which causes them to lash out as if I had something to do with their inability to keep the things of this world Black and White.”

I admire Sara’s courage and tenacity to continue to stand tall in the face of adversity, even if that adversity comes from his own father.

Back to Sara’s inability to find employment. Part of the trouble with finding work had to do with the lackluster economy as I stated earlier. Sara is far from the only person in town who was having trouble. It was why so many were leaving town. The other reason why employment opportunities were not presenting themselves for Sara was because Sara (though he considers himself more female than male) had not been raised as a woman and as such had not been taught the skills necessary for a life as a wife and mother.

“Mary and several other servants my father employed tried to teach me how to cook and sew and whatnot, but I failed miserably. The only skill I had was gardening, which I had picked up little by little from my mother. Of course, since we here are in the middle of a desert, there is little demand for gardening skills unless you find yourself captivated by how to cultivate a cactus field.”

Unfortunately, that is all too true. Being originally from the state of New York and now finding myself living in a desert, the sight of the brown landscape stretching on for as far as the eye could see has the tendency to be a depressing sight indeed. I find myself missing my garden with its sweet fragrance and bright colors as well as the feel of the soft green grass beneath my toes. I even find myself missing snow, which is ironic seeing as I used to loathe the winters.

So, with no prospects of employment in the near, or even the distant, future (not unless a miracle happened) and with his money as dried up as the mines, unless Sara wanted to start robbing banks and holding up stagecoaches, there was only one profession he could turn to in order to keep from starving to death: the oldest profession in the world; it also happened to be one of the only thriving businesses in our dying little town (other than the saloons and the undertaker).

At this point, I had to wonder why he did not move on like so many others had. Why remain in a dried up town that was as good as dead? Surely relocating to California would offer plenty of opportunities, opportunities one could not find here any longer.

Sara’s answer was simple. “I cannot afford to move.”

Unfortunately, Sara was not alone in that regard. The Hendersons who run a tailoring business down the street from the clinic as well as the Cooks who run the General Store were examples of the growing sect of people who did not have the money to move and yet could not afford to remain either.

Given what little I knew about Sara’s volatile relationship with his father, I knew there was no point in asking Sara why he did not send a telegraph to his father and ask the man to wire him money. The answer was clear enough without having to ask Sara this question for Sara has made it clear over the years that his father had only one child, a daughter named Joanna.

What of his sister then? Unlike their father, Joanna still considered Sara family. In fact, Joanna considered Sara her only family.

“Things at home did not change after Father disowned me. If anything, Father was at home less.”

I suppose, in a way, Sara and Joanna’s father was mourning. Not only had he never gotten over the death of his wife years earlier, but now his only son was dead. Their father was drowning his sorrow by working himself to death.

His father aside, surely Joanna would gladly help Sara out until he could get back on his feet, but when I asked Sara this, he shook his head, looking morose. By this time, Joanna was married and the couple was expecting their first child.

“I didn’t want her to worry about me.”

I am unsure whether to call Sara noble or foolish.

So, with nowhere else to turn to, Sara had no choice but to make one of the most difficult decisions of his life.

This decision to prostitute himself out as if he were one of Hank’s girls was not an easy decision for Sara to make. (It should be mentioned that Hank runs the town’s oldest and most popular saloon and the only remaining brothel in town, which sits across the street from my clinic). Sara agonized over the decision to join the legion of Soiled Doves (as the cowboys called those women who offer their “services” in exchange for payment) for weeks. Unfortunately, he had little choice when his money ran out.

“While it kept food on the table and a roof over my head, it also made me sick to my stomach. I often cried myself to sleep and when I bathed (and I bathed as often as I could), I would scrub and scrub and scrub until I as red as a sunset. I was so disgusted at myself for having fallen so low, to be so desperate, as to prostitute myself out for a mere handful of gold just so I could buy a loaf of bread.” By this point, Sara was crying silent tears. He gave a laugh that was not an indication of his amusement. “It made me feel…Have you ever read Macbeth?”

I confess that I have not.

Written by William Shakespeare, the story of Macbeth is about an Aristocratic couple (Lord and Lady Macbeth) who, along with their friend General Banquo (who later himself is murdered), plot to murder the Scottish king Duncan so that Macbeth can become king (which was apparently prophesized by three witches that Macbeth happened upon). The guards, who had fallen asleep at their post, are framed for the king’s murder. Their plan comes to fruition when Macbeth is crowned king. But not all is well as more murders are committed, including that of Banquo, whose spirit comes back to haunt Macbeth and Lady Macbeth has a pang of conscience for her part in the murder of her king. As the guilt eats away at her, she wakes in the middle of the night to the sight of her hands covered in the blood of her king, blood she cannot wash off no matter how many times or how hard she scrubs. When her guilt becomes too much for her to bear, she eventually commits suicide. In the end, another Aristocratic named Macduff discovers the truth behind the murder of Duncan and in turn murders Macbeth for his crime, thus becoming king of Scotland.

“Pleasuring men in exchange for a trifling fee made me feel so encrusted with filth that it reminds me of Lady Macbeth who could not seem to wash the blood from her hands no matter how much she tried.”

The first time Sara walked into the clinic, he was covered very nearly from head to foot with bruises in all stages of healing. The oldest bruises were barely visible whereas the newest ones gave him a yellow sheen. There was even an indication that his right eye had been blackened some weeks earlier. But these were not the wounds Sara had come to me for that day. His fresh wounds consisted of a sprained left wrist, several ribs were broken and his bottom lip was split, though it wasn’t bleeding.

It should be noted that at this time I was unaware that the young woman whom entered the clinic was not an ordinary female. That discovery did not come until later. I was also not aware of her chosen profession. The only Soiled Doves I knew where the dozen or so girls who worked for Hank and as I did not recognize Sara as being one of those girls, I merely assumed she had a heavy-handed husband, which was not so unusual these days.

As I treated Sara’s wounds, I tried to get her (I use “her” here because at the time, I believed that to be what she was) to tell me what happened, but as I would quickly learn about Sara, she would tell me only that a spooked horse had been the cause. I very nearly believed this excuse for just the week prior I had a patient who had been kicked by his horse. The injuries were very similar, but I had treated too many of Hank’s Girls with similar injuries to be fooled.

The truth was that Sara had been assaulted by one of his customers. When I asked him later if this unnamed customer had discovered that “Sara” had been born “Stephen”, he admitted that since he fell in with the Soiled Doves, there have been several customers who beat him nearly to death for discovering he was a jimmy and not a true jane under the skirt and layers of petticoats, but that this particular guy was just one of those men who got off on bullying those whom he considered weaker them him.

“Thankfully, I was able to grab the black iron sconce that had fallen off the wall earlier and knock him out before he killed me.”

When I asked what happened to the man, Sara said he waited until the wee hours of the morning when the streets were deserted and dragged the man behind one of the more ill repute saloons in town and dumped an entire bottle of bourbon on him, but not before Sara took the money he was owed. According to Sara, that was the last time he ever saw the man again.

Other than the occasional despotic individual who procured Sara’s particular service, business was good. Though unemployment was soaring in our fair little town and people continued to leave in droves as a result, there was also a steady flow of people coming through town on their way further out west. Among those, there was always someone looking for some loving.

It was a short time after Sara’s initial visit to the clinic that he went to work for Hank. I cannot claim to be surprised. Hank seems to be of the mind that he has a monopoly on the entire business of providing “virtuous” women to cowboys in exchange for a monetary fee. Sara was not the first, nor was he the last, independent operator to be swallowed up by the conglomerate that was Hank. In fact, most of those who end up working for Hank (and I am not just referring to the girls who work in the brothel), prefer it. Sara was one of those people. He told me when I asked that working for Hank made him feel safer and I admit that I understand why many feel this way about the man for Hank is a larger than life individual. He stands well over six feet tall and at least half that wide. It is said that Hank could bend steel into a perfect bowtie with his bare hands without breaking into a sweat. Nobody messed with Hank unless they were drunk, not right in the head or not from around here, but they all learn pretty quickly.

When I asked Hank why he approached Sara, he replied, “First and foremost I am a businessman and a good businessman must be alert to all opportunities that would help his business to grow. I must admit, thought, that when I first discovered what Miss Sara was, I had the desire to run him out of town like the freak he was or string him up as a warning to others just like him, but then I got to thinking and I realized what a huge opportunity this was. There is a high demand for what that boy offers. You just have to know where to look.”

That was when I realized that Hank knew about Sara. I wonder when and how this happened. Of course, when I asked, neither Hank nor Sara would answer. Like usual, Sara just gave me that smile of his and Hank, well, Hank was Hank. It made me wonder if Hank had perused Sara’s services with the intent to test her “skills” (as it were) before offering her a job at the brothel and thus discovered “her” little secret. It was a possibility. It was also possible that rumors about Sara had reached Hank and he went to check them out for himself.

Either way, however it happened, Sara describes it as yet another fortuitous event for it was a year later when a man calling himself Eric rode into town. It was said he was cold-hearted and one of the cruelest, meanest bastards this side of the Mississippi River. And yes, this is the same Eric that was mentioned earlier. In time, this sadistic cowboy would “make an honest woman” out of our secretive Sara (his exact words).

“I’d been riding for a week and I was looking for a bath, food, a bed and a good woman and not in that particular order.”

At one point (this was before the source of our town’s life’s blood dried out like the lake the next town over), there were more saloons, brothels, gambling halls, hotels, theaters, shops and even a couple of museums than a person could visit in one lifetime, but times have changed. One by one, the many places of business closed, their workers fleeing elsewhere, but amidst the chaotic reshuffling that has been life in this time for the past five years, one business stands tall and proud, the only defense against what surely will be a ghost town in a short matter of time. That place was Hank’s, the sole remaining saloon, hotel, brothel, gambling hall, theater and gift shop in our dying town.

So it was no wonder that was where Eric headed when he rode into town, as it was one of the only remaining businesses in town.

“I had no plan on staying more than a night.”

As I have since learned, that was because Eric was an outlaw wanted in several states and territories. What the crime is he was accused of, I am still not aware. “The less you know the better,” is what both he and Sara have told me repeatedly. They are probably right. But it gave me pause when I realized that Sara was all too aware of what his husband and the father of his children did to bring the law done upon him. Was it wise, I wondered? Resigned to the fact that I would apparently never discover the reason why Eric rode into town on that fateful day and continued to test fate by remaining, I inquired of Sara if he could at least tell me if Eric was guilty of the crimes he was accused of.

“There is no simple answer I can give you. It is more complicated than a simple yes or no could answer.”

With those cryptic words, my curiosity grew, but I fear I will never figure out the mystery behind them.

But I digress.

It was just before dusk when Eric rode into town. By this time, the saloon was in full swing. Actually, the saloon was always in full swing. There did not seem to be a time when this was not the case, at least never that I have noticed. It was no wonder Hank was one of the richest people in town.

At Hank’s, Eric was able to easily quench the first three needs (that being a bed, a bath and some grub), but on this particular day, Hank was unable to help Eric with his last need for all of the girls were either otherwise pre-occupied or had taken ill.

“And that was when I saw her, the most gorgeous woman that I had ever seen.”

Sitting in the corner downing shot after shot glass of whiskey and with the sights, sounds and smells of the saloon washing over him, Eric just happened to look up and who should he spy on the upper landing (where the rooms Hank rented out were located) leaning against the railing, watching the goings-on the saloon floor below was none other than our Sara.

“She was a tiny thing and did not have much in the way of breasts, in fact, she was pretty near flat-chested, but that was all right. I was never much a big bosom fan. Her jet-black hair was piled up on top of her head, all except for this single curl tossed over her shoulder that was as white as snow, which just happened to match the garter on her shapely thigh that was sticking out of a side slit in her skirt that went all the way up to here. A black choker graced her slender neck. Black fishnet stockings and heeled ankle boots finished off those lovely legs. An off the shoulder purple and black lace dress was so tight it left nothing to the imagination. It showed off her curves to perfection. Her bejeweled eyes scanned the saloon with boredom and exhaustion. She looked like an angel standing up there, beautiful and regal.”

**[Editor’s Note: A small section of the page was too missing.]**

“Nothing about that meeting was a coincidence.”

Sara was very adamant on that point. As he has stated continuously, all the heartache and trouble he has faced since the unfortunate passing of his mother when he was seven has led up to the moment when he met those gorgeous baby blues across the saloon.

“It was fate.”

Eric was more pragmatic.

“It was coincidence plain and simple. It was either here or continue on to Galestown.”

Half a day’s journey to the northwest, Galestown is another boomtown that exploded into existence around the same time as our fair little town several decades ago. Whereas our town was breathing its last, Galestown had had a resurgence in the last decade in the discovery of oil. Unfortunately, there were rumors that the oil was running as dry as the mines that once had our twin towns prospering.

That Eric decided not to travel on to Galestown like most people did could not be a mere coincidence even though those who come to town are one of two types of people: either they haven’t heard that the mines have run dry (which I find difficult to believe as news of this sort runs the gamut from coast to coast faster than the telegraph) or are in need of a quick pit stop.

“If I had decided to travel on to Galestown, I never would have met Sara.”

I had to disagree. Men such as Eric tended to avoid Galestown for two simple reasons: they had long ago outlawed brothels and saloons. It was as dry as the desert during a drought.

And then there was the fact that the only Soiled Dove available was Sara. Any other day and Eric would have had his pick.

No this was no mere coincidence.

Whether Eric wants to admit it or not, he and Sara were fated to meet that day.

“I had to have her,” Eric told me, “so I made my way to the bar and asked Hank who she was. He told me her name was Sara and that she was for ‘special customers’ only. Now, I had no idea what that was supposed to mean and at that moment, I didn’t care. There was something about this woman, this Sara, and all I wanted was to sweep her into my arms and make sweet love to her. I wanted to kill all the other men in the saloon who insisted on defiling her with their filth.”

If you ask me, that sounds a lot like love at first sight, but when I mentioned this to Eric, he scoffed went on with his story as if I had not spoken, though his cheeks were a little rosy. Was the fearsome outlaw blushing?

As you can probably ascertain from the aforementioned, Eric did not believe in love at first sight, though he freely admits to having been attracted to Sara from that very first moment. On the other hand, Sara is as much a romantic as myself and claims it was love at first sight when I inquired whether he agreed with Eric or not.

Knowing how each felt for the other, I inquired as to what happened then.

“I told Hank I wanted her. He asked me if I was sure, said Sara isn't what she seemed to be.”

As Eric was too infatuated by the sight of Sara to think clearly, Eric never bothered to ask Hank to clarify what he meant when he said that Sara was reserved for “special customers” or that she wasn’t what she seemed and Hank being Hank, he didn’t voluntarily offer any explanations of his own, which is just like Hank, which is pretty underhanded (again, this was on par with how Hank acts on a daily basis). Everybody knew that Hank did not give refunds. That policy was ironclad and had been the cause of many brawls over the years. There were no exceptions, ever, not even for Eric who I have since learned has been friends with Hank since they were children.

“I asked Hank how much she cost and when he named the price, I handed over the gold without incident.”

Eric may not have bat an eye or even considered why spending a mere hour in Sara’s company cost such an outrageous amount in comparison to the other girls who worked for Hank, but I surely did when I asked Eric how much he paid. That Eric did not, said more than words alone could express.

Then, since I heard from Eric what his first impression of Sara was, I wondered what Sara’s first impression of Eric was.

“Hank signaled me down and said I had a customer. When he pointed out Eric, the first thing I noticed about him was his guns, twin peacemakers in a black finish.”

Which just happened to be the same make and model used by Sara’s father used to run him out of town and halfway across the country.

“He is a lot like Hank, a giant among men. I tell you, I have never seen so many tall people in my life than I have in the short time I have been living out here. There must be something in the water. Even in heels, I barely come up to his shoulders.”

Even now, I chuckle because I was the exact same way when Harold and I moved here from New York. My Harold was no more than five-foot-nine-inches tall, I am five-foot-four-inches in height, and more than three-quarters of the people living here (before they all fled) were close to six feet tall. It’s enough to give a poor soul a permanent crick in her neck.

“And his hair! The exact shade of the yellow daffodils my mama loved so much. And of course he was wearing the same outfit every other guy in the western half of the United States was wearing, a white four-button pullover shirt with a high, rounded collar under a black suede vest and matching floor length trail duster, under which I could see a double-tooled black holster with his twin peacemakers. His thick, tree trunk legs were encased in matching black pants and spurred boots that looked as if they needed a good spit and polish. A black hat sat on the table in front of him.”

With the intense way Eric kept staring at her, Sara got a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“He stood up as I approached. That’s never happened before.”

Ever the gentlemen.

Sara led Eric back to her room where things got a little hot and heavy.

“And then it happened.”

Even now I wince at the reminder of how time and again those who perused Sara’s services beat Sara nearly to death after discovering a jimmy and not a jane under the skirt, but since he came to work for Hank, those type of incidents were far and few between. Hank took very good care of his girls. He put up with nothing from anybody.

I dreaded learning what transpired between the two when Eric was suddenly hit with the unwanted answer to the question he should have asked of Hank.

“When I felt her up under her skirts and discovered something that should not be there, at first, I was furious.”

And who wouldn’t be? Though Sara was born a boy (for the most part), his father had been right on when he accused his son of being too effeminate looking. Sara was more beautiful than any naturally born woman I have ever seen.

Even after all of these years later, Sara’s face clouds with shame. “If I would’ve known that Eric hadn’t been told what I was, I never would have--I would have refused to take him my bed. This was the very scenario that I had been hoping to avoid when I agreed to come work for Hank, but here we were.”

Sara secretly told me that Eric’s initial reaction hurt more than he has let on to his husband. “I was really in love with him and to have him reject me…” By this point, he was sobbing quietly. “It hurt worse than when Father proclaimed that his son had died.”

I cannot imagine being rejected like that.

“I knew that Hank refused to give refunds, but I didn‘t like how he had deceived Eric like that, how he’d put me in danger like that. What if Eric had been like the countless other men? Hank has told me on more than one occasion that his business has tripled since I came to work for him, so it’s not as if he could just get some girl off the street to replace me if I were to die at the hands of one of these men who don’t appreciate find a jimmy in his bed. So I decided that I was going to try to talk Hank into giving Eric his money back and if that didn’t work, I was going to pay Eric back using my own money, but as I went to get up, Eric grabbed me.”

What was going on in that man’s head, I wondered?

It seemed that Sara had been mistaken. He had not been rejected after all.

“I didn’t understand it myself. I still don’t, but…”

Strangely, Eric was not disgusted or humiliated by the sight that had greeted him as he had lifted up that skirt. What was even more confusing, was that he did not want this strange he-she male to walk out that door. A flash of her standing on the second floor landing looking over the crowded saloon flashed in his mind and all those feelings returned. No, he had been attracted to her from that very second. Learning she was really a he, strangely enough, did not dampen those feelings or the strong sexual desire he felt. If anything, it only added to it.

“I was shocked! I mean, he’d paid for a woman and I clearly am not a woman, not really anyway, and he says, ‘I paid for someone I was instantly attracted to.’”

Sara has a knack for impersonations. He can imitate anybody he has ever spoken to or least heard speak and the ones I have heard were all spot on.

Blushing, Sara said, “From that day on I was ‘Eric’s girl’.”

Several months later, Sara returned to my clinic complaining of nausea and fatigue. Not only was this my first introduction to the silently brooding and ruggedly handsome Eric, but it was also the day I learned the truth about Sara.

Everything changed with that visit. The couple learned they were pregnant with their first child and I learned that Sara was not in fact Sara, nor was he Stephen for that matter, so what does that make him? Her?

Sara said it best when she said, “I’ve always gone by Sara, from as far back as I can remember. My sister gave it to me one day when we were playing Tea. I fell in love with it instantly. From that day forward, I was Sara. There was a name, an appropriately masculine name, my parents gave me upon my birth, yes, but I never considered it my name. I always despised it. It was like acting out a part in a play. It was just a role, nothing more. Besides, that person, the ‘son’ my parents longed for is dead. In fact, from my point of view, he was never even conceived. For my father, his son died the day he kicked him out of the house. I told Father that was fine because to me, he died the day my mother was found in the garden.”

Whatever Sara is, though he was not a true woman, she considers herself more a woman than a man.

Either way, she has become one my best friends and I love her and my nieces and nephews dearly.

 

* * *

 

**Editor’s Note**

What was, at first, assumed to be a work of fiction, turned out to be a true tale. It turned out that a Marjorie Smith did in fact exist in a boomtown out west in the later half of the nineteenth century. Records indicate that Ms. Smith was the daughter of a widowed woman named Harriett. Astonishingly, Harriett was a doctor who wound up taking over her husband’s practice after he died from pneumonia. Additional records indicate that there was a young married couple, by the name of Eric and Sara Williams, living in this same town.

Currently, I am in the process of searching for Eric and Sara’s descendants to inquire as to whether the Eric and Sara mentioned in this account are one and the same and if so, do they have additional information?

Sara’s story intrigued and fascinated me. A person who has both male and female reproductive organs? Hermaphrodites were not unheard of, but I’ve never heard of a “true” hermaphrodite like Sara before. I’ve heard rumors, yes, seen the headlines splashed on the tabloids, but I never took them to be gospel. They were always shot down by so-called “experts” as being impossible.

But if this account of a boy named Sara was indeed true, then the impossible had just become the possible.

How would the world react to the possibility of a third sex, I wonder.

 

**…The End**


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